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Placement Of Navagational Buoys In Kalamazoo Lake Done "Willy-Nilly"

May 29th, 2015 | By Efrain Sandoval

“Controversy
has been brewing” over the placement of the navigational buoys this spring,
conceded Saugatuck City Council Member Ken Trester, also serving as chair to
the Kalamazoo Lake Harbor Authority Board, during Monday night’s Saugatuck City
Council meeting.

Bob
Sapita, the former chair of the authority, has chimed in on the issue.

Sapita - via a memo sent to the
authority members as well as city officials – made some serious accusations
about the placement of the buoys this year in the Kalamazoo River channel.

During the council meeting, Trester
shared those comments with his fellow city leaders.

Sapita’s memo included statements
such as this year’s buoy installation range from “they (the buoys) are being
placed willy-nilly” to “you don’t need those hazard buoys—they are too
confusing” to “you get what you pay for—was there a detailed job specification
for the installation?”

In response, Saugatuck officials as
well as local marina owner RJ Peterson - who has installed the buoy system at
no costs to the cities of Saugatuck and Douglas – said they do not perceive the
issue to be a big problem, at least not an insurmountable problem.

“The harbor is marked for safe
navigation,” said Saugatuck City Manager Kirk Harrier. He further shared with
council that Kalamazoo Lake Harbor Authority Vice Chair Patrick Burroughs had
navigated his boat using the buoys.

“He
(Burroughs) encountered no problems,” said Harrier.

Explaining
part of the problem for the authority, Trester said to councilmembers, “We
don’t have the resources to hire an engineer to replicate last year’s (buoy)
chart.”

Sapita
explained the rationale and history of that nautical chart in his May 26 memo,
saying, in part:

“In
conjunction with the development of the Phase 1 Dredging Plan, the authority
set in motion the Buoy Sub-Committee to develop a channel-marking buoyage plan
that would meet with USCG’s (U.S. Coast Guard) and IALA’s (International
Association of Marine Aids) Region B specifications.

“Brent
Birkholz took the lead in this effort that after many interactions culminated
in a plan that was ultimately approved by the USC. The approval letter from the USCG stipulated that the waters
in question were not ‘maintained’ by the USCG and would be classified as
Private Aids Navigation.

This meant it would be a (Kalamazoo
Lake Harbor Authority) action item to get the data to NOAA (National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration) for inclusion in future nautical chart
publications.”